WHO SAYS you can’t go home again? In “Drag Me to Hell,” director Sam Raimi revisits the gloriously gore-splattered, teasingly tongue-in-check mini-genre that he invented in the 1980s, with movies like “The Evil Dead” and “Evil Dead II.” After those early triumphs, Raimi went on to increasingly bigger (“A Simple Man,” “For the Love of the Game”) and more soulless (the “Spider-Man” series) projects. But “Drag Me to Hell,” which Raimi cowrote with his brother Ivan, is a joyful renewal of old vows. It’s the work of a filmmaker once again drunk on the daffy possibilities of horror filmmaking — and determined to share that joy with his fans.

Alison Lohman plays Christine Brown, a bank loan officer competing against a cutthroat colleague (Reggie Lee) for a promotion. When a strange old woman named Mrs. Ganush (Lorna Raver) putters into the bank begging for an extension on her delinquent mortgage, Christine’s first impulse is to take pity on her. But in order to prove to her boss (David Paymer) that she can be an efficient and unsentimental business woman, she denies the request.

It doesn’t take an advanced degree in cheesy horror plotting to know what comes next: In the parking lot that night, Christine is attacked by the old woman, who proves surprisingly limber for her advanced age. Claws are bared (literally), blood and (assorted other fluids) go spurting. Before long, Mrs. Ganush has placed a curse on hapless Christine. Unless our heroine can find a way to pass the curse onto someone else, she will soon be enjoying a one-way ticket to hell.

The rest of “Drag Me to Hell” consists of a series of increasingly bizarre and profane plagues sent down upon poor Christine, who simply wants to settle down with her nice fiance Clay (Justin Long). In lesser hands, this might all border on the sadistic or misogynistic. But Raimi knows how to make gourmet fondue from Velveeta; he creates a kind of frenzy of cheesiness.

A mysterious necklace that contains the secret to this deadly curse? “Drag Me to Hell” has got one of those. A talking goat? That’s here, too. By the time Christine makes her way to a wacky funeral that looks like a scene out of one of Emir Kusturica’s Gypsy musical-dramas, like “Underground” or “Black Cat, White Cat,” Raimi has brought us to a giddy realm where anything can (and probably will) happen.

Considerable credit goes to Lohman, an underappreciated actress (she’s the best thing about “Where the Truth Lies” and “White Oleander”) who suffers these often messy indignities with considerable aplomb. She’s an emotional anchor in a movie that might easily have descended into CGI nonsense.

And speaking of CGI, Raimi has fashioned a movie that looks both state-of-the-art and self-consciously retrograde.

Not everything about “Drag Me to Hell” works. Long’s character is given almost nothing to do, and the tension between Christine and Clay’s snobby parents might have been exploited to greater comic effect. But as the film bounces along, its sheer energy and enthusiasm proves infectious.

Just shy of his 50th birthday, Sam Raimi has made a movie so freewheeling, ragged and fresh that it’s likely to be the envy of recent film school graduates everywhere.

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